Book Review: No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
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December 22, 2011

Author Melissa Fay Greene I had the pleasure of meeting Melissa Faye Greene at the Austin Jewish Book Fair in November. She was there to sign No Biking in the House Without a Helmet (Sarah Crichton Books, 2011) and to provide the opening address. No Biking is a memoir chronicling how she and her family of six (mom, dad, four kids) adopted five orphans from overseas—one… [Read More]

The Last Persian Prince of Poetry
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December 15, 2011

On YouTube you can view hundreds of clandestine copies of the unofficial people’s anthem of Iran, “Ey Irani.” The identities of these underground musical artists remain unknown but the viral impact is political dissidence. On the streets of Tehran in 2008-2009, the song lyrics of Malek O’Shoara Bahar offered resistance to tyranny. The Green Movement and the Arab Spring now interest Americans as social media… [Read More]

Igor Kenk, The World’s Most Prolific Bike Thief
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December 8, 2011

Kenk: A Graphic Portrait is a curious combination of forms. Investigative journalism with a splash of memoir and mystery, Kenk tells the true story of Igor Kenk, the world’s most prolific bicycle thief. His story made headlines first in Toronto, his local city, before spreading to national and international news media. His arrest and the news media tell one story but Kenk: A Graphic Portrait… [Read More]

An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank
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December 1, 2011

The case of Leo Frank—the Cornell-educated, Jewish supervisor of the Atlanta Pencil Factory who was convicted for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913 and lynched for the same in 1915—has been with me much as of late. In the last three weeks, I have reviewed Steve Oney’s And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank… [Read More]

Review: And the Dead Shall Rise
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November 17, 2011

In 2009, when my boss offered me tickets to see the musical “Parade,” I of course said “yes.” I knew that “Parade” retells the story of Leo Frank, the German-Jewish superintendent of Atlanta’s National Pencil Factory, who was convicted of slaying 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan, in 1913. Later, when Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison, an angry mob sprung him from… [Read More]

“Almost Everything Takes Forever”: Poems by Kirsten Wasson
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November 3, 2011

“A novel, biography, and memoir, all/three going at once.” This is how Kirsten Wasson describes her mother’s voracious literary appetite in the poem “One Way to Read.” The two lines, however, could well have been written to describe the author’s new collection of poems, Almost Everything Takes Forever, published by Antrim House Books. It is a lush, lithe, witty, emotionally frank series of postcards from… [Read More]

The Fallback Plan
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October 27, 2011

After the endless commencement ceremony, the cap toss, and the droning luncheons with family and friends, comes the panic-induced question asked by the college graduate: What next?  Debut author Leigh Stein accurately captures this bewilderment and sense of loss experienced by so many Generation Yer’s post-college in her first novel The Fallback Plan (Melville 2012) due out in January. Esther Kohler- Stein’s Juno-esque protagonist- graduated… [Read More]

Guantanamo Boy
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October 13, 2011

Guantanamo Boy (Albert Whitman, 2011 reprint) is the story of a teenager in the wrong place at the wrong time in a dangerous political climate. It’s a story of closed ears, fearful eyes and silent mouths. A story in which the small kindnesses buried deep in the heart have the power to keep a person alive, like the power of a good book (a Reader’s… [Read More]

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help
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October 13, 2011

I first picked up The Help while on vacation this summer. I was in need of lighter literary fare so snatched the sensationalized book club favorite from my mom’s nightstand. What’s all the fuss about, anyway? Five-hundred odd pages later, I see why Kathryn Stockett’s divisive work has been the object of so much scrutiny on both sides of the color line. Set in Civil Rights… [Read More]

The Photographer
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September 14, 2011

The mission opens with a good-bye and closes with a hello. The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (First Second, 2009) opens with our protagonist leaving Paris to do a photo-reportage mission of a MSF (Médicins San Frontières, or Doctors without Borders) caravan that’s going into northeastern Afghanistan, near the city of Feyzabad. Starting with them in Peshawar, Pakistan he will cross fifteen… [Read More]